Sami Reiss on Becky McAuley
For this newsletter, we asked our good friend and esteemed writer Sami Reiss (author of Sheer Drift and publisher of Snake America newsletter) to do an interview with Becky McAuley about her new novel Lost Indignation, out now from us, Shining Life Press. Read on to learn a bit more about Becky and her approach to writing the book.
Fiction is probably the only real reporting we have; after that there are zines, but not in the same way. Becky Miller’s Lost Indignation is the first piece of anything ever written in this way to report on how a way of life is for some people: what it’s like being into hardcore, being obsessed with music that is specific, and in some ways doesn’t exist, being young, balancing a life and living it… that is to say a type of being alive. In a better world, more will be written, but as it stands, this is the first. But it’s also just a cared for, precise novel about people—that puts up no walls around the art at its center. - Sami Reiss
Sami Reiss: Was this the first piece of fiction you’ve written?
Becky McAuley: Hi and thank you for doing this interview! Yes, it's the first piece of fiction that I’ve finished as an adult. I’ve started many novels over the past 30 years, but only finished one (so far).
SR: Did you know it was a novel from the start?
BM: I originally started writing a different book about Mo set in 2007, but switched to a different contemporary story when I had a spontaneous idea in 2017. I was walking down Birch Street, one of the most underrated streets in Mount Vernon, looking at the slate sidewalk, and was like I should write a Mo book about the hunt for a mysterious demo. The only question was if/when I was going to finish it.
I am not a fan of most short stories besides those by Marie-Helene Bertino and I don’t know if my discursive style would work in short story form. Though it was fun to think of short story topics for Mo's fictional classes.
SR: So much of Lost Indignation to me, feels like a love letter to edges of hardcore where reality bends: great records that didn’t happen, stories too good to be true. (I’m thinking of Knockdown, the song, or Alone In A Crowd’s one show—not far off from an unknown demo.) Where does imagination fit into hardcore, or rather, hardcore lore, for you?
BM: Hardcore is full of questions like: does a demo exist and if so, will it ever see the light of day? Two big influences on the fictional hunt for Indignation were my multiyear pursuit of Show of Force demos, and the famed first Minus Merauder demo which finally resurfaced a few years ago. If you don’t know if a demo exists, you can only imagine what it might sound like, what the layout might look like, and the circumstances of how it came to be. There are also those rumors of like, some dude with a closet full of Zero Tolerance windbreakers (an apocryphal rumor from the Thunder-Lizard message board?) or a store at the Wyoming Valley Mall with Path of Resistance longsleeves (real, at least in 2003.) Hardcore inspires speculating, reminiscing, and therefore is fertile ground for imagination.
Speaking of imagination, I would be remiss not to mention “Intimidation ‘97” and “is it my imagination? Or are YOU acting like an asshole?” Imagination also made it into David Eckley’s cringey spoken demo intro!
In a hardcore novel, it’s a balance between infusing real details (and sometimes real anecdotes in different contexts) while crafting a story that’s entirely fictional. One of my favorite parts is making up band names of varying quality. Some I ended up working into the story to pack the place with dense detail, like an over-capacity show. For example the existence of a band called Ashamed of Mistake was a mirthful late-night invention. So OK then, what type of band is Ashamed of Mistake? A lame one, containing a dude who got thrown in the Long Island Sound by a nefarious character appearing in Chapter 9!
SR: Why Westchester County? For you, and for Lost Indignation.
BM: My husband Mike is from here and I was lured to the Fleetwood neighborhood of Mount Vernon, NY by the chocolate chip pancakes at the Athena diner (RIP.) We lived in the Bronx for a few years then came back to Fleetwood because it’s a special neighborhood and one of the last affordable places in the lower 914. I’m from NJ so I grew up going to shows in NYC but also appreciate that MV is just across the border from the Bronx and more convenient to the city.
Selecting realistic locations is an essential part of my writing process, so I write about neighborhoods I love and where I spend a lot of time. I worked in a building in Dobbs Ferry, NY that resembles the one in the book, and while to my knowledge no one ever stashed artwork in the ceiling of its decrepit bathrooms, it felt plausible. And I picked neighborhoods in Yonkers where I could see kids hanging out and walking to the train for shows. My fictional version slightly deviated from history, as there is an actual confluence of HC kids from Colonial Heights in Yonkers, which is why the Raw Deal demo has a Centuck P.O. box address. Meanwhile there are parts of the book that are so real that I could visualize them happening, like Ryan and David walking across the bridge to the Fleetwood train station after the debacle in Chapter 5.
SR: I know many interviews grill the subject about how they get into hardcore music. I’m more interested — why beatdown for you, and later NYHC? I remember, from your zines, you were into this in the mid 2000s, when no one outside that immediate scene was interested. How did it speak to you? What do you see in it, if I can be a little pretentious, as an art form? Did it fit in with your life at Princeton?
BM: I put a version of this in the book when Ryan sees Supertouch in Mahopac and “it felt like his whole life was leading up to this and all his other prior musical choices had functioned primarily to point him in the direction of this sonically perfect band.” For me that was hearing Warzone in 2002, though Supertouch is also in my top 5. The quest for sonic perfection led me from the Lookout Records catalog to Avail, Ensign, 7 Seconds, Turning Point, and then Warzone. I got into the heavier stuff incrementally and fortuitously. By the time we met at Posi Numbers in 2004 I had the Bulldoze themed cover of Double Rabies #2 where I photocopied a bandana and am still finding pieces of photocopied bandana 19 years later. With the help of friends funneling me burned CDs, I kept seeking out more esoteric examples of my favorite subgenres, and am still excited by new bands playing those styles to this day. It’s been a long and fun road from falling in love with the New Breed Comp 18 years ago and now here I am appearing at an event alongside Freddy Alva this weekend.
So while the sound initially drew me in, I’ve also been inspired by years of lyrics, sometimes in different contexts from which they were intended, and always appreciated the DIY aspect. Hardcore is the perfect art form because it’s accessible and unpretentious and real. I’m honored to still be a part of it 20+ years later and that it was a resource and refuge for me in times of my life that I didn’t fit in, like my time at Princeton! My grades probably would have been better if I hadn’t been going to so many shows, but I’m also convinced that hardcore provided inspiration and diversion to make it through.
I also just like thinking about stuff, like Next Step Up rhyming “anguish” with “vanquished”, which albums open with what words, etc. The unusual format of I Question Not Me is a necessity due to my strange brain needing an outlet to expand and expound, and much of that was also infused into Lost Indignation.
SR: I know you’re a voracious reader, and you pulled references for this book that have gone over the head of many readers—the books of Mark Harris in particular. Is literature a different part of your brain than hardcore? Was there friction meshing these two things together? Or are there ways Mark’s books are not unlike the Occupied Territory demo?
BM: Mark Harris’s books are like the Occupied Territory demo in that they are both underappreeshed, in b9 parlance, and represent a moment in time. All my obsessions from baseball to hardcore to books to rap are mashed together in my brain and I am constantly finding crossover between them, as featured in the Next Step Up/Lost Empress venn diagram in I Question Not Me. And thank you for participating in the Philip Roth of NYHC feature! I aspire to be the Suzyn Waldman of NYHC if not Philip Roth, and to write about places I love the way that Roth and Mark Harris do. Marisha Pessl using specific addresses in Night Film captivated me at the time I was reading it (during the 2013 playoffs) and ever since, so when you referenced the sense of place in the Lost Indignation blurb, I was inspired by all of the above.
SR: And speaking about you: is there a tension between your disparate interests—literature, baseball, certain strains of hardcore music—or are they one thing, or Chinese walled?
BM: Risking slight overlap with my last answer, all my interests fall in the same part of my brain and it’s both exciting to combine them, and to spot crossover when other people do. Upon spotting a Biohazard reference in Paul Beatty’s Slumberland, I realized in horror I hadn’t mentioned Biohazard once and had to make a last minute insertion.
The title of Lost Indignation is accidentally a combination of two of my favorite books, Indignation by Philip Roth and Lost Empress by Sergio de la Pava - but when I picked the title in fall 2017, Lost Empress wasn't even published yet, so I didn’t know it was going to be one of my favorites! Indignation the band is also named after the Roth book, by me if not by Ryan, since the book didn’t exist in 1988 either. And Ministry of Fear is indeed a Graham Greene reference by me and Eckley.
I love when people remember what show they were attending when historic sports moments were occurring, like in Brett Beach’s intro for the In Effect anthology, and have started asking about that on my site Serve ‘em a Sentence. I met Mike at a Maximum Penalty show at the Pyramid during the 2007 in ALDS when I asked the score of the game. One of my favorite parts of writing Lost Indignation was thinking back to the 2017 playoffs, what I was doing during each of those games, and how they could organically be woven into the story. It was truly magical for the book to be published last year while the Yankees were following the same playoff trajectory as they did during the book in 2017.
SR: They say in hardcore you’re old at 23, and in literature you’re young at 45. I’m wondering when the process for you with this book started. The lively descriptions of shows, bands, records— were you noticing these scenes when you were young and going to shows? Or did they come later? Did you approach shows ever, as a reader?
BM: While I may need Google Calendar reminders for every mundane life task, I have two decades of vivid show images in my brain and continue to witness moments that I later realize are the perfect setting for fictional events. With Lost Indignation set in fall 2017, there were some real shows that fit naturally into the book, like the Raybeez memorial show in Tompkins Square Park, and Outburst/Killing Time at Brooklyn Bazaar. I imagined Ryan and David playing their show at the Portuguese American Club almost like a show at the Garfield VFW. To my knowledge there has never been a hardcore show at the Portuguese American Club but I do say what’s up to it every time I walk home from Mount Vernon East. And sometimes truth imitates fiction, like when I wrote about Indignation playing in a park on the Hudson, and then I went to see the Du-Rites in a park in Dobbs Ferry last fall, also on the river but a few towns south of Sleepy Hollow.
SR: What was your research process like? Was it distilled—did you dig around for info on a specific thing here? Or was the good crap for so much of this great book floating around in your head? I’m thinking especially of the detail in the ‘90s scenes.
BM: The details are a combination of things infused organically as I imagined scenes happening, and areas I had to consciously fact check. I asked Mike about ‘80s video games and what car would Dion drive. As my editor and a Yonkers native, Chris Skowronski had some great hyperlocal suggestions, like Matt’s dad reading The Herald-Statesman.
I remember what it’s like to be starting a band in a basement as a teenager so it was easy to write about teenagers starting a band, even if they were doing so in 1988 rather than 2002. So while I never picked “Friend or Foe'' as a tryout song, it was fun to think of what Indignation would pick.
The ‘90s was probably my most heavily researched chapter. I was lucky enough to interview AJ McGuire about the Boston stuff and Armando Bordas about SUNY Purchase and the logistics of playing at Wetlands. There was actually no ‘90s chapter until I was on the way to Outburst and Crown of Thornz in 2018, on 177th about to get on the Sheridan, and was like “I want to write in a Shift show at the Wetlands!” The Shift show turned into my final fictitious lineup of All Out War and Fahrenheit 451, and then figuring out Ministry of Fear’s path to (not) playing that show.
SR: What’s next? Another book, I hope?
BM: Thank you for not just doing this interview and helping shape Lost Indignation, but wanting to read another one! I’m already working on multiple novels simultaneously, though I’ll get back on track once I sort out some professional situations and certifications. I’m giving myself 5-6 years per book, but also hoping to get I Question Not Me #6 out in 2023 or 2024, since I already have themes for #6 and #7. Maybe someday a biography of Mark Harris, but after writing novels where my primary joy is making up fake band names, could I write an entire book containing no fake band names? As Bitter End would say, time will show.
BUY LOST INDIGNATION HERE
SLP-050: SHINING LIFE PRESENTS - OH YEAH! LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL
SLP-050 is happening tonight! Saturday, May 13th in Washington, DC at DwellDC and tomorrow, Sunday, May 14th in Baltimore, MD at the Royal Blue Bar. It’s BYOB, food and drinks provided in DC with tons of zines and books being sold/given away at both. The show will be hosted by Kelly Xio, there will be readings by everyone followed by a Q & A session directly after. Readings done by…
JENN PELLY
Jenn Pelly is a contributing editor at Pitchfork and author of The Raincoats. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Wire, and others. She lives in New York.
CHRIS RICHARDS
Chris Richards is the pop music critic at The Washington Post. His writing also appears in his self-published zines Debussy Ringtone and the forthcoming Remedial Hardcore, and he recently helped write and edit Speaking in Tongues, a zine about the Dischord Records band Black Eyes. He is a former member of the band Q and Not U and he lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.
BECKY MCAULEY
Becky McAuley is the author of Lost Indignation and the creator of I Question Not Me, Double Rabies and serveemasentence.com. She has contributed to In Effect, the New Breed Black Book, Gratitude Fanzine, Lifers, and Some Will Never Know. She lives in Mount Vernon, NY.
NED RUSSIN
Ned Russin is the author of Horizontal Rust. He plays bass and sings in Glitterer and Title Fight. He currently oversees the Joint Custody Newsletter and lives in Washington, DC.
FREDDY ALVA
Freddy Alva is the author of Urban Styles: Graffiti in New York Hardcore. He was born in Peru & grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens. He edited two of the first NYHC fanzines to feature Graffiti, co-released the seminal New Breed Tape Compilation, ran Wardance Records & booked shows at the early Abc No Rio scene. In the past couple of years he has written online articles for Noisy/Vice, No Echo, Mass Appeal & Cvlt Nation.
KATY OTTO
Katy Otto plays drums in Rainbow Crimes and runs the DIY label Exotic Fever Records. She’s a lover of words and beats, writing essays and poetry when the urge strikes. She lives in Philly with her partner and two kids.
Philadelphia and New York are being scheduled next for summer 2023, get in touch with any suggestions or questions Shininglifepress@gmail.com
SLP-045: BULLSHIT MONTHLY Fanzine Anthology
Bullshit Monthly was a fanzine that chronicled the New York Hardcore scene from 1984 through 1991. Beyond interviews and record reviews, every bit of news that could be written down was crammed into its pages, mostly hand written with grainy photos, and sold at hardcore shows for 25–50 cents.
With this collection, gathering all of the issues together for the first time, your depth of knowledge and understanding about what was really going on in the 1980’s New York Hardcore scene will dramatically deepen.
Also includes a bonus section full of unreleased content along with issues #26-30 from 2013.
"Bullshit Monthly played just as much of a major role as the bands making that scene." - Roger Miret, Agnostic Front
"Hand-drawn, hand-printed, typed, clipped, cut, pasted... look up ZINE in the encyclopedia of punk... you'll see a picture of it right there." - Mykel Board, Author
"Bullshit Monthly presented a comprehensive and thorough depiction of what WAS the NYHC scene of 1984-1991." - Gary Goldstein, Tse Tse Fly Fanzine
"It had a personality and like its creator it was pure New York. It was responsible for more than one great NYHC group coming together." - Sean Murphy, Collapse
"Reading it was like overhearing a thousand conversations outside CBGB's at once." - Brett Beach, Hardware Fanzine
SLP-043: URBAN STYLES - Graffiti in New York Hardcore (Third Edition)
Urban Styles: Graffiti in New York Hardcore is the first book from author/historian Freddy Alva. Urban Styles is a chronicle of the intersection of graffiti art and the NYHC scene of the 80s and 90s. Over 370 pages with many full-color photos and 40 interviews with legendary writers and artists like Mackie Jayson, REVS, MQ, Lukie Luke, LORD EZEC, STAK TFP, Chaka Malik, SANE SMITH and many more.
SLP-047: GRAND SCHEME Fanzine
Large interview with DC/MD/VA's finest GRAND SCHEME conducted at Joint Custody (DC's best) after hours along with each member giving their 5 record influences separately. 16 pages total of pure unadulterated HARDCORE! Cover art by Augie.
FLOORPUNCH Book
It’s been awhile but this bad boy is coming really soon, we promise.
JUSTINE DEMETRICK Photo Book
A long overdue document showcasing the best photographs from one of the most beloved photographers. Featuring hardcore bands from all over the northeastern US from 1987-1997.
JOY MACHINE 1996
Gathering all advertisements, flyers, and photos from 1996 along with full length interviews with Donny Barley and Jamie Thomas.
Joy Machine 1993-1994 and Joy Machine 1995 are available at shininglifepress.com.
PLAY TO DESTROY
Play To Destroy: Turn of the Century Hardcore Punk is a detailed oral history exploring 75 DIY bands from around the globe. From What Happens Next to Life’s Halt to Limp Wrist to DS-13 to Vitamin X to Nine Shocks Terror to Municipal Waste, these bands played stripped-down hardcore punk thrash that above all else was fucking fast. From the States to Japan to Europe to Brazil and more, it is the culmination of more than 150 interviews with punks from over 20 countries across 5 continents. Follow @thrashwagon for more info. Life’s Halt photo by Karoline Collins.
SPOILER ART BOOK
Collecting over 20 years of Spoiler’s album covers, illustrations, paintings and more.
RIVER ROCK CAFE by Larry Ransom
The complete story about this legendary Buffalo venue showcasing photos, flyers, and lore from the locals.
SAMHAIN Fanzine Anthology
Collecting the first 7 issues of this horror fanzine from the UK in the late 80’s. After the 7th issue the zine went full on pro glossy magazine but we are concentrating on the early issues with the homemade fanzine aura along with a new introduction by the editor John Gullidge.